Senior BJP leader Kavinder Gupta, who was serving as Lieutenant Governor of Ladakh, has been appointed Governor of Himachal Pradesh.
Gupta's political career is closely associated with Jammu and Kashmir, particularly the Jammu region.
He represented the Gandhi Nagar constituency in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly and rose through the ranks of the BJP's state leadership.
In 2015, he became Speaker of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly during the BJP-PDP coalition government. He later served briefly as Deputy Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir in 2018.
His subsequent appointment as Lieutenant Governor of Ladakh came after the reorganisation of the former state into two Union Territories in 2019.
Ladakh's Lieutenant Governor Kavinder Gupta on Thursday resigned from his post, barely eight months after assuming office. Gupta had taken oath on July 18, 2025, becoming the third Lieutenant Governor of the Union Territory.
His tenure coincided with rising unrest in the region, where civil society groups and organisations such as the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance have been protesting, demanding statehood, Sixth Schedule protections, and job reservations for locals. Reports also suggested that Gupta faced public anger on Wednesday during his visit to a local monastery.
Gupta, 66, joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at the age of 13 and was jailed for 13 months during the Emergency. He later served as the secretary of the Punjab unit of the Vishva Hindu Parishad from 1978 to 1979 and was chief of the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the Bharatiya Yuva Morcha from 1993 to 1998.
